Carl Jung on Life after Death
Letters of C. G. Jung: Volume 2, 1951-1961
Anonymous
Dear Frau N., 30 May 1960
My old age and the need for rest make me fight shy of too many visitors, so I have to confine
myself as far as possible to written answers.
I can answer your question about life after death just as well by letter as by word of mouth .
Actually this question exceeds the capacity of the human mind, which cannot assert anything beyond itself.
Furthermore, all scientific statements are merely probable.
So we can only ask: is there a probability of life after death?
The point is that, like all our concepts, time and space are not axiomatic but are statistical truths.
This is proved by the fact that the psyche does not fit entirely into these categories.
It is capable of telepathic and precognitive perceptions.
To that extent it exists in a continuum outside time and space.
We may therefore expect post-mortal phenomena to occur which must be regarded as authentic.
Nothing can be ascertained about existence outside time.
The comparative rarity of such phenomena suggests at all events that the forms of existence inside and outside time are so sharply divided that crossing this boundary presents the greatest difficulties.
But this does not exclude the possibility that there is an existence outside time which runs parallel with existence inside time.
Yes, we ourselves may simultaneously exist in both worlds, and occasionally we do have intimations of a twofold existence.
But what is outside time is, according to our understanding, outside change.
It possesses relative eternity.
Perhaps you know my essay “The Soul and Death .”
For its scientific foundation I would draw your attention to my “Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle,” in Jung and Pauli, The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche.
These are my essential thoughts, and I would not express them otherwise in a talk with you.
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 561.